Last winter I finally moved family photos off Google Photos. Not for ideology, just tired of Google One getting more expensive every year.

Hardware: old Dell Optiplex 7040 (i5-6500, 16GB, 1TB SSD + 4TB HDD) in the bedroom closet, running Proxmox. LXC with Immich for photos, Nextcloud for docs, and Matrix for family chat.

It was messy. I set up Immich, told family it’s done, but forgot to set up proper backups. In January the HDD had errors and I almost lost a month of kid photos. No 3-2-1, only local copy. Wife still brings it up.

Now: Immich with daily backup to external USB, weekly rclone to B2, and Nextcloud with versioning. Matrix is still half-used because sister is on Messenger.

Cost is now about $6/mo for B2 vs $15+ for Google One family, but time cost is higher.

For those who run Immich on similar old Optiplex / small box in closet — how do you handle backups without making it a second job? And how do you keep noise/heat down? My closet is warm and wife is not happy about second heater.

Happy to share docker-compose if anyone needs.